NiTRO Edition 1 - Watt's Next For Creative Arts

DDCA is a national body formed to promote, sustain and advance learning, teaching and research across the creative arts sector. NiTRO is the DDCA’s dedicated space for views and news in the tertiary creative arts community.

NiTRO Edition 1 - Watt's Next For Creative Arts

Welcome to NiTRO, DDCA’s dedicated space for views and news in the tertiary creative arts community. Our first edition focuses on the changing higher education landscape as we ask: Watt’s next for creative arts?

Editorial

Welcome to the first edition of NiTRO, DDCA’s dedicated space for views and news in the tertiary creative arts community. Every six weeks we explore an issue of particular interest to creative artists practicing in the university sector. Our first edition focuses on the changing higher education landscape as we ask: Watt’s next for creative arts?

In this edition of NiTRO, Contributors from the higher education and arts sector consider how creative arts disciplines are positioned in this rapidly changing landscape...

President's Introduction

At the DDCA annual conference in Adelaide in 2015, a group of 25 leaders in the creative arts engaged in rigorous and expansive discussion following a series of highly astute commentary and presentations by invited colleagues. Our goal was to determine how to advance our profession amidst the volatility of the higher education sector.

The glaringly obvious fact occurred to us that, this material, so useful to progress our profession, had been heard only by the 25 people in the room, and that was all. The discussion and debate featured only the experiences and perspectives of those of us attending. This would not do.

The Australian Government’s Federal Budget announcement in May was confirmation that funding for the Office for Learning and Teaching would be discontinued after this year. The news, though not unexpected, represented a blow to funding for teaching and learning scholarship in Australia.

The impact will be particularly acute for the creative arts. Australia’s universities can continue to count on research funding to support many areas of scholarship. But for a host of reasons the ARC’s record for funding and advancing creative disciplines is not high relative to other fields. With no funding for innovation in learning and teaching, the creative arts will be the poorer.

‘In God we trust. All others bring data,’quipped US statistician, W. Edwards Deeming. As he implied,measurement is an inherently conservative occupation. Units of appraisal have to be agreed in advance, while the aim of measuring something is usually to compare it with something that already exists...

There are a lot of things that happen in universities that the majority of the population don’t know about. Research is one of them. The average punter – even the average undergraduate – would have little idea as the scope, scale and importance of research that takes place. And having a scientist try to describe it usually doesn’t help. A quick read of successful research grants of the two major granting bodies explains why. This is esoteric stuff. It’s arcane, mystical and cabalistic all at the same time. Not stuff ordinary people like me can even begin to comprehend...

The strength and relevance of IDEA lies the rich diversity across, and within, the 12 programs; while at the same time they share the same dynamic external context, the impact of which has led to institutions competing nationally and internationally to elevate themselves within various university ranking systems. The contest is to re-position reputation and strategic relationships so as to attract high quality researchers and students, and therefore increase their portion of the limited available funding. The battle to prevail is political and financial...

The National Innovation and Science Agenda, launched in December 2015, has significant consequences for tertiary institutions, and in particular, for the art and design disciplines, as well as the broader arts, humanities and social science (HASS) fields. The Agenda’s embrace of innovation rests on four key pillars: one that address tax breaks for business; another that supports students to adopt digital strategies (primarily in science and maths); another to amend the visa system to attract international talent, and depict the government as a facilitator of digital know how. The fourth pillar, collaboration – specifically collaboration with industry – will directly affect university art and design schools, programs and divisions...

The ever-changing higher education landscape affects all disciplines and their related industries in a variety of ways, and the creative arts discipline is not immune to these changes and challenges...

Australia is engaged in completing a transition that will result in academic endeavour being placed squarely within the ‘triple helix’ of university-industry-government. Priority research projects will be those that can secure funding from ‘end-users’. The challenge for researchers is now shifting from publication and peer review to benchmarks of impact and industry engagement. At present, highly ‘engaged’ work in screen production research often leads to outputs that are either not counted as research or counted inadequately without any effective recognition of impact...

Why Subscribe?

Creative arts disciplines make up a significant component of the university staff and student population, yet we lack a vehicle to share common experiences and issues.

NiTROprovides a platform for creative artists practicing in academia to contribute to informed discussion about issues and activities relating to practice, research and teaching taking place within the university sector.

With details of events, conferences, research resources, and articles from guest contributors and creative artists working in DDCA member institutions, subscribing to NiTRO keeps you up to date with the what, why and when of university based creative arts.

Subscription is free and open to artists, educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in creative arts research and tertiary education.

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